The Sands of Time

Thibault Gerbaldi and his wife Lucia travelled in November 2022 across Namibia. From the Namib Desert through the enigmatic Skeleton Coast and all the way to the Kaokoland at the frontier with Angola, this work conveys the feeling of timelessness that Namibia inspires.

This series is part of a project called “The Sands of Time” which depicts the timelessness of the Namibian land, reflecting the striking contrast between the permanence of nature and the ephemerality of our passage on Earth.

The Sands of Time is about the timelessness of the Namibian land. This book reflects through the lens of the photographer on the striking contrast between the permanence of nature and the ephemerality of our passage on Earth. Dead trees in a lunar landscape, sculptural women with amber skin, desert dunes with sinusoidal curves, countless shipwrecks, in Namibia everything has the footprint of the sands of time.

Stretching from the south of Namibia up into Angola, the Skeleton Coast is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. This 300 miles eerie coastline, called by the Portuguese sailers "the Gate of Hell", is strewn with shipwrecks and bleached bones reminding us of how impermanent civilization is. The golden windblown dunes of the Namib Desert reach right to the dark blue Atlantic Ocean, leaving a stark yet fascinating landscape. Sand dunes rise majestically and glow orange in the sunrise. They change hue through the day, meandering through reds and yellows before turning to silhouette at dusk. North of this inhospitable coastline, on each side of the Kunene River in the heart of the Kaokoland live the Himba, the last surviving nomadic pastoral tribe in the country, a tribe that grows nothing and eats only meat, surviving wars and drought.

Tall and slender, this proud yet friendly people are noted for their unusual sculptural beauty, enhanced by intricate hairstyles and decorations. From a distance, the Himba look like the desert's mirages - their skin glowing like copper from the ochre slathered on to protect themselves from the sun. In so many ways Namibia blows away any preconceived notions about what Africa should be. It expresses in a majestic way how powerless against nature and time we are. Humans often believe we can bend the world to our will and that our reign will be permanent. Namibia offers a simple and powerful rebuttal to this notion.

Cuándo

June 8, 2023

Dónde

Leica Store Miami, 372 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables

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